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The Project
Wealth & Space is an international collaborative research project led by five university partners, NGOs and local community organisations. Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the project investigates the nexus between wealth accumulation and the production of space in Latin America. The project departs from two premises:
Wealth Accumulation
The accumulation of capital is historically related to producing and appropriating space, infrastructures, land, and natural resources. Consequently, space and society are mutually co-produced, and the contemporary phase of rentier capitalism produces and is produced by spaces that primarily serve the extraction of rents.
Production of Space
In Latin America, powerful economic actors referred to as "economic groups" largely control and shape the production of space. Through networks of companies that are linked by long-term formal and informal ties, yet have remained legally independent, these economic groups are able to coordinate their actions and accumulate wealth.
By introducing spatial dimensions into wealth research, Wealth & Space tackles important knowledge gaps of how contemporary capitalism unfolds in and across space. It provides novel understanding on how producing and controlling space is co-constitutive for the genesis and reproduction of wealth.
During the 2025 annual meeting field visits with key local activists and academics were conducted amongst others in Cancún, Playa del Carmen, and Sisal, focusing on the critical observation of points of conflict such as tourism transport and accommodation infrastructure and lifestock mega-farms in Yucatán.
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The second annual meeting took place in Brasília in October 2024 and brought together the project’s full academic team, along with collaborating non-governmental organizations, to discuss preliminary findings on wealth–finance–space dynamics in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.
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In November 2025, the Wealth&Space team met in Mérida, Mexico. The meeting provided an opportunity to learn about the topics of study on the Yucatán Peninsula, and to make significant progress in the observatory and follow up on articles in progress.
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